Where reality is a matter of perception

Hujambo! Or, as they say in your universe, greetings earthling! Did you get my postcard?

I’ve been away, visiting a strange alternative universe where fact is fiction and TV reality. (In this universe, U2 and all the other bleeding heart liberal and/or homosexual bands don’t exist, so I’m free to plagiarise their lyrics till the thunder cloud passes rain and the streets have no name).

It’s a lot like your universe, this place, except for a few subtle differences. Most obviously, the president of the United States Barack Hussein Obama bin Laden was born in Kenya and is indeed a Muslim.

Who knew that Fox’s science fiction TV show Fringe, about an almost-identical version of Earth that exists in an adjacent dimension, was actually a documentary? Who knew that Olivia Dunham and the Fringe Division really were protecting us from so-called Fringe Events, where elements from the other dimension leak into our dimension and wreak havoc?

Though, being Fox, it does have a fact or two wrong. The alternative version of reality doesn’t exist in an adjacent dimension, but in the same dimension as regular reality. It’s not a complete replica of reality, either, but more of a subset. And, to get there, you don’t have to climb through a worm hole, a rip in the fabric separating the two dimensions. You just have to log onto the internet.

Which is how I got here, on the other side. I was visiting a new search engine, blekko.com, which features a type of search known as “slashtag search". At the time I visited its home page last week, it offered an example of slashtag searching, to give visitors an idea of what the concept was about. The example was “global warming /conservative", the latter part of that search obviously being the slashtag, which filters your results according to your world view.

Obediently, I clicked on the example search, and found myself in a strange version of the internet, which was like the internet, but not as I used to know it. The same information is there, only it’s a little different, a little strange.

When you search for global warming in the conservative version of the internet, the first hit you get is from a site called “Conservapedia (The Trustworthy Encyclopedia)" which is an alternative version of Wikipedia written for and by conservatives.

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Conservapedia’s entry on global warming has this to say: “Temperatures have been decreasing rapidly throughout this decade (as of 2009). Historically, natural periods of global warming and global cooling have alternated, and not long ago liberals were demanding more government control to combat an alleged cooling in temperatures, with some scientists warning of a possible ice age."

The site goes on to say that increased atmospheric carbon dioxide is the result of global warming, not the cause; and atmospheric carbon dioxide is the cause of global warming, but only when the stuff comes from the ocean.

Also in Conservapedia you’ll find entries on: atheism (with subheadings such as “Tenuousness of Atheism in Prominent Atheists and in Large Populations", “Atheism and Immoral Views" and “Atheism and Mass Murder"); Hollywood values (“characterised by decadence, narcissism, rampant drug use, extramarital sex leading to the spread of sexually-transmitted disease, abortion, lawlessness, promotion of the homosexual agenda and death"); and gun control (“unique among social programs in increasing the emotional and physical dependency of all citizens on government").

It’s like Wikipedia, only different. And, yes, there’s even an entry on the “liberal bias, deceit, frivolous gossip, and blatant errors" in Wikipedia.

All of which has me wondering, perhaps the debate about net neutrality should expand a little, and look not just at what internet service providers and media companies are doing to control the internet (or, mostly, not doing) but also at slashtagging. What if it took off? What if, instead of an internet hobbled by ISPs and media companies, we found ourselves with hundreds of virtual internets, where users choose their version of reality with a slashtag and stick to it? Which would be more harmful to society, I wonder?

Where is Olivia Dunham when you need her? (Answer: as a creation of Hollywood, she’s off promoting homosexuality and lawlessness.)